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Investors can't get enough Tesla recently, and the company sees that as an opportunity. Capitalizing on the stock's soaring popularity, Tesla announced today that it's raising $1.6 billion in capital through convertible senior notes to fund its future plans.

After the market closed on Wednesday, Tesla said it will offer $800 million in convertible senior notes due 2019 and another $800 million due 2021. There's also an additional set of $240 million in notes available to underwriters only, which brings the potential total up to $1.84 billion. All notes will be convertible into cash and/or shares of Tesla’s common stock, at Tesla’s election.

All of this money is earmarked to "accelerate the growth of its business in the U.S. and internationally." Tesla says it will go toward the development of its "Gigafactory" for producing electric batteries and its next generation ("Gen III") mass market vehicles.

Tesla announced a similar round of capital raising in May 2013 to raise about $830 million. At that time, billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk said he intended to lead the capital raising round by purchasing $100 million worth of Tesla stock in the deal. There was no such announcement this time around.

Tesla stock, up 2.02% in trading during the day, ticked up another 1.98% in after hours trading as of 4:46pm EST.